Category Archives: Politics

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Not that there’s much traffic here, but I’m blacking the blog out tomorrow in support of the opposition to SOPA. I work in Information Technology and understand just how bad it would be for the Internet as we know it. We’re not China or Iran, though with what’s been going on in Congress lately, we could be going there. We should NOT be going there.

It’s asinine that Congress can’t get their act together to pass a budget but when Hollywood flings some money at them they have no problems working things out. Make sure you call your Senators on January 18th and let them know you oppose SOPA and PIPA.

If this article over at Outdoor Wire is to be believed, the ATF is poised to remove the CLEO sign-off requirement for Form 1 and Form 4 paperwork. That means that individuals will be able to complete NFA purchases in counties where the sheriff is hostile. In Texas that includes Bexar (San Antonio), Harris (Houston), and Dallas (Dallas) counties. In other words, a sheriff will not be able to deny someone their constitutional rights simply because they don’t like them.

I would still advise against going down the individual transfer route. It leaves ones family unprotected, as opposed to a well written trust. That has been the legally permissible route to get around CLEOs that refuse to sign off on NFA paperwork. One big reason why it should still be the route of choice is that it allows you to put your family on the trust as well as you. That means that they can legally be in possession of the NFA items as well. For example, lets assume you and your significant other go to the range with a suppressor and you are injured and have to be taken to the hospital. If you’ve done an individual transfer, that suppressor can’t be in anyone else’s possession. It’s an illegal transfer, which is a felony punishable by a $10,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison. So your significant other could not take it home to lock it back up in your safe (you DO have a safe, right?). On the other hand, if it were transferred via a trust, and the significant other is on the trust, it’s good and nobody’s facing jail time.

Keep an eye on this, because it sounds like they’re going to open a comment period, and you can expect the opposition to come out of the woodwork. They love CLEO sign-off on everything, even though it is used to deny people their rights for political reasons.

Lets take a look at some numbers, shall we? According to the CDC, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and lower respiratory diseases each kill more people than “accidents” (which lumps falls, car crashes, and even accidental shootings into one bucket). And what’s worse for Rep. Schultz and her friends is that homicide didn’t even make the top 10 list.

Lets ask ourselves what the folks opposed to firearms ownership would stand to gain if they could force private sales to be screened? Well, first of all, it’s kind of hard to actually stop two people from meeting somewhere and exchanging paper for steel. We haven’t been able to do it for certain chemical compounds, so what makes her think it’ll work this time? Besides, I’m don’t think that it would be workable without also requiring gun registration (see! slippery slope!). So would that be next? A few years from now are we going to listen to some elected official saying that we need to register all firearms so that we can stop those illegal sales? What’s next after that? Since they’ll know who has what, confiscation is next on the list. It’s happened everywhere ekse where gun registration was implemented.

If she really wanted to reduce deaths in this country, shouldn’t she be pushing for the almighty government to require a cholesterol check before allowing someone to buy a Big Mac?

For extra credit, head on over and read Joe Huffman’s Jews In The Attic Test for even more reasons why this is a bad idea.

Lets take a look, shall we? Based on the numbers from here it looks like the top 50% of wage earners pay over 94% of all income taxes. Furthermore, in 2002 the top 5 (five) percent of income tax payers paid just more than half of all income taxes but only earned a hair over 30 (thirty) percent of the income.

So if the bottom half pays less than 6 (six) percent of all income taxes, aren’t we already taxing “the rich”?

I got to go over to UTA to see Thomas Friedman speak about his newest book. It was an interesting lecture, covering energy and population related subjects. He raised some interesting points about the so-called green movement here and talked at length about the need for the U.S. to take the global lead on weaning us from our addiction to petroleum.

Well… I’ve got news for you, their definitions leave off any break-open action weapon, including all single shot, side-by-side, and over-under shotguns. That means that you’d have had 90 days to surrender them, destroy them, or get them out of state.

So, whether by ignorance or malice, my bet is that Mr. Obama would sign a similar bill if it came across his desk in D.C.